With over two million people incarcerated in the U.S. and approximately 600,000 prisoners being released each year, issues of criminality, justice, and punishment have become central sites of struggle and contestation in the contemporary period. Over the last thirty years, the prison has become a central means through which social insecurities are expressed, struggled with and managed. Anti-prison activists, such as Angela Davis and Julia Sudbury, have coined the term Ã¢â‚¬Å“Prison Industrial Complex,Ã¢â‚¬Â to name the Ã¢â‚¬Å“symbiotic and profitable relationship between politicians, corporations, the media and state correctional institutions that generates the racialized use of incarceration as a response to social problems rooted in the globalization of capital.Ã¢â‚¬Â In this course, students will engage in in-depth examination and critical inquiry into the field of prison studies. Through shared readings, seminar style discussion and written assignments, students will use race, gender, class, sexuality and nation as central analytics through which to think through the unique constellation of forces that is the prison industrial complex. Examples of course topics include, the War on Drugs, indigenous women prisoners and reproductive health, U.S. Militarism and immigration detention Centers.